Tony Burrows

By rights, Tony Burrows should be a one-man oldies package tour -- though he never charted a record under his own name, he holds the unusual honor (you can look it up in The Guinness Book of World Records) of having four records in the British Top Ten at once, all under different names. The British session vocalist sang Edison Lighthouse's "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)," White Plains' "My Baby Loves Lovin'," the Pipkins' ridiculous "Gimme Dat Ding," and the Brotherhood of Man's "United We Stand," all of which were big hits in both the U.S. and U.K. in 1970. With his high range and pleasantly anonymous yet versatile pipes, Burrows was an ideal tool for songwriters looking to craft bubblegum or light pop/rock for the AM airwaves -- they were looking for hit songs, not for hit artists, and what did it matter to most consumers that the "groups" didn't really exist? He started out in music as a teenager in the mid-'50s, amid the skiffle boom in England, and turned professional in 1960. Burrows' first group, the Kestrels, dated back to the days of skiffle and had been formed with three school friends, future songwriter/producer Roger Greenaway, Roger Maggs, and, a little later, Jeff Williams -- they stayed together even in the army (which they all joined at the same time) and became a quintet in 1963 with the addition of Roger Cook. The Kestrels were a harmony vocal group, and lasted until 1965 amid the burgeoning high-wattage sound of Merseybeat before calling it quits -- that same year, Burrows got to cut his first LP, except that even then he didn't use his own name, issuing it under the stage name "Tony Bond" amid the craze surrounding the Ian Fleming-spawned secret agent James Bond and the movies starring Sean Connery. That gimmick having failed, Burrows joined a...